WE NEED YOUR HELP
(last updated March 2001) Previous generations of ancestral researchers and collaborators could not have imagined how the Internet and other technical developments, such as the World Wide Web, CD writing, and darn good genealogy software, would someday have such a major impact in furthering the collective efforts of our family researchers. The Internet has been invaluable to us as a family in enabling us to connect with Bowlby cousins worldwide!
In addition to your option of becoming a BFO member, we are always grateful for your willingness to involve yourself with our organization and our site in any area which best reflects your particular talents and interest. I’ve outlined below some specific areas in which we could use any help you’d care to offer.
1. Submission of information on your lineage and research efforts - The best method of forwarding your information to us for inclusion in our family database is in Gedcom format and sending it as an attachment to: cynthia@bowlbyfamily.org I will then forward your information along to the collaborative researcher who is responsible for entering data for your specific line, introduce the two of you! – and you’re off and running!
WAIT - ALREADY WE'VE LOST HALF OF YOU!!!!
We are always grateful and delighted to receive your information in any format that’s most convenient for you. For those of you who are not “on-line” (and many of our cousins aren’t), postal mail is fine. Or a quick phone call to let us make note of your address. You are even welcome to show up at our front doors if you’re ever in our “neck of the woods.” Scribblings on paper napkins are also acceptable! We also ask that you then be willing to review what we do with your fine work in terms of the data entry, and make any necessary corrections to the document we return to you for review. This is especially important, as our primary goal is to gather as much accurate – and hopefully, well-sourced -- information on our lineages as we can and preserve it as a gift to future generations.
2. The Newsletter - Mary McAllister is editor of The Bowlby Family News which is published three times a year. She is always grateful to receive any announcements from the family about births, deaths, marriages, accomplishments of family members, and certainly any ideas or suggestions anyone may have for feature articles. ***PLEASE*** send your information and ideas to her at: marymc@warwick.net or by postal mail at 698 Bullville Road, #4, Montgomery, NY 12549
3. Bowlby Family Gathering - We have plans to hold a Grand Bowlby Gathering in the summer of 2002 (probably a weekend in July) in Hampton, New Jersey. As the time grows closer, we will be looking for cousins to help organize it by participating in certain committees set up by the reunion coordinator. Certainly, we will make every effort to spread the word to all Bowlby descendants, and ask them to let others know about our plans. We are currently compiling a “Master Mailing List” of addresses (both email and “snail mail”) to be used for proper announcements and invitations, and we’d like to add your name to it. Also, we welcome any suggestions you may have for activities or additions to our agenda. Again, *please* contact Mary McAllister!
4. Membership - Maddy Hume <4mhume@home.com> is responsible for coordinating our membership and for all BFO accounting. If you have specific questions regarding these important areas, please don't hesitate to drop her an email!
5. Updates to the body of knowledge about the BOWLBY FAMILIES IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA - compiled by Raymond E. Bowlby. This is quite an undertaking. We, as a family, are blessed with an abundance of talented researchers. We each have a slightly different emphasis and interest, too, and this only adds to the fun and delight! As many of you know, we've been working extensively with this publication (1993 Edition) and we have distributed the workload among specific lineage descendants who work hard to input information into our database. At some point we will need additional help in reviewing, correcting, and adding to this massive amount of data. We've developed "Standard Operating Procedures" which has become quite technical. If you are extremely comfortable with gedcoms, pretty comfortable with multi-media links, feel okay about editing photos, have at least heard of ftp and are willing to learn about it, are familiar with the generation "short hand" we use beginning with Rychard(1), are very familiar with Raymond Edwin Bowlby's work, and would like to be a part of our mutual goals of obtaining, sharing, distributing, and connecting our family to a descendant from the 8th, 9th, or 10th generation on down, ***Please*** let us know. Nothing is worse for a genealogist than a “dead end” which most of us encounter at some point in our research, and this is something we can’t allow to discourage us. Someone – somewhere – has the one piece of information we are looking for. And maybe it’s you! So we must continue working together to amass as much information as we can about the family we are so fortunate to be a part of!
Please be in touch with me if you are interested in being part of this challenge and in a position to help in these areas in any way you can.
If you've read this far, YOU REALLY SHOULD LET US KNOW - IT MEANS YOU HAVE THE MOST IMPORTANT QUALIFICATION - YOU ARE INTERESTED!!!
Thank you *very* much
cynthia@bowlbyfamily.org